Darren Stevenson

Darren Stevenson is a Ph.D. Candidate in Communication Studies at the University of Michigan. His work examines privacy, personal information, and trust, with applications for business strategy, innovation, marketing and advertising, and information law and public policy.

His current research investigates the alignment of interests between firms and consumers when it comes to collecting information about individuals and how the use of this data impacts consumers’ trust, attention, and autonomy, along with related business models. This work is motivated by issues surrounding the future of media and communications, digital content personalization strategies, and emerging information technologies. Darren’s research draws from a range of methods including surveys, experiments, focus groups and user studies, computational techniques, and analysis of online data.

At Michigan, Darren is a member of the Infrastructure Research Laboratory in the Department of Communication Studies and School of Information and the Media Psychology Laboratory at the Institute for Social Research. Darren has designed and taught courses in marketing, advertising, journalism, media and communication studies, art & design, computer programming, and research methods. In 2012, he was a Visiting Scholar at the School of Computer Science & Communication at the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) in Stockholm.

Prior to joining the University of Michigan, Darren managed the Visualization Laboratory at the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science & Technology and studied in the Institute of Communications Research, the College of Engineering, and the School of Art & Design, all at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. During this time, Darren was a graduate fellow at the International Forum for U.S. Studies and a graduate researcher at the Center for People & Infrastructures. His undergraduate degree is from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Darren has served as a consultant on a wide range of technology projects for Fortune 500 companies, national laboratories, universities, government organizations, and political campaigns.

It is the first week of March, which in the U.S. means it is also National Consumer Protection Week. This coordinated annual effort encourages people to assert their rights in the marketplace and make better informed consumer decisions.

Planning to do some online holiday shopping? LSA Ph.D. student Darren Stevenson explains how advertisers get and use your personal data to predict what you’ll buy—and, sometimes, even what you’ll pay.

You finally dug out the snow pants and scarves, paired the stray gloves and mittens, and found your son’s snow boots that are at least two sizes too small. The next time you’re at your computer, you type “boys winter boots” into a search engine and scan through dozens of websites that probably sell exactly what you’re looking for.

Hour Two: Junior Affiliate Scholar at Stanford Law School‘s Center for Internet & Society Darren Stevenson joins the show to share his insight on Internet privacy and what companies can find out while you shop online.